Shadow Shifters: Damaged Hearts, The Complete Series: Mine to Claim, Part of Me, and Hunger for You

by A. C. Arthur

  He reached for me then, running his finger along the rim of my nightgown. I sucked in a breath just as his tongue had snaked out to run along his bottom lip. Act or react, I’d thought, now or never and never was going to be too damned late. So I acted. I balled my fist as tight as I could and I reached out, punching him right in the dick. He yowled and doubled over in pain and I ran, out of my room and down the stairs, down into the living room closet by the front door. I pushed past the old newspapers Mama liked to keep and huddled in the farthest corner hoping he wouldn’t come looking for me, praying he wouldn’t find me.

  For hours I’d been trapped and fear had scraped along my skin like nails. I’d cried and cried and nothing had happened, the act alone hadn’t sent someone to rescue me, so I vowed not to cry again. Eventually I got up and came out of the closet. The pervert had left for work by then and I went about the day as if nothing had happened. But something had and it had changed my life.

  With a sharp inhale and resolution spreading through me like wildfire, I reached both hands up and pushed my hair back, looking around once more as I did. On a slow exhale of breath my arms fell to my sides, my right arm banging against something … something … I looked down at my legs, saw blood seeping through my jeans and then I saw a bulge, right at the top of my hip. With tentative movements I slid my hand into my pocket and almost screamed with relief.

  When I’d left the bar earlier tonight with Dex I had my car keys in hand because I’d been intending to get in my car after our discussion and go home. When Dex had pulled me around the back of the bar instead, I’d stuffed my keys in my pocket so my hands would be free in case I’d had to fight back, which I did.

  I was thanking every entity and higher being known as I pulled out the keys and moved around the car. Once inside another tear fell and I nudged it away with the back of my left hand while my right shoved the key into the ignition.

  “Please start, you piece of crap. Please just start, goddammit, start!” I yelled as the engine sputtered and spit and then finally decided it would come to life one more time. I sighed and pulled off, not once looking back, not having the guts to.

  CHAPTER 13

  Caleb

  Dex was dead.

  I’d wanted to kill him, felt absolute power and retribution when the teeth of my cat had finally clamped down on his brain, crushing everything that he was and everything that he was meant to do.

  I didn’t regret one second of what I’d done or the life I’d ended. That made me a murderer.

  And Zoe had seen that. She’d seen the part of me I’d never wanted anyone to know about. Hell, it was the demon inside I’d vowed never to let out because I’d known what the repercussions would be.

  All those years I’d been with the Sanchezes and we’d traveled the world talking to other Shadow Shifter tribes, learning their ways and making strides to keep a worldwide peace, I’d done so out of necessity. I never believed in any of the bullshit, never wanted to live in their world, or the human one for that matter. How many times had I wondered why the humans hadn’t killed me that day I’d gone into their village looking for the one that had killed my mother? I’d wanted to die then, wanted desperately to stop breathing, stop living, stop seeing the trees and the flowers she’d loved so much. The scent of the rainforest clogged my lungs and the sound of her voice in my head threatened to drive me insane.

  I’d wanted to die.

  But I hadn’t.

  Tonight, I’d wanted to kill.

  And I did.

  Now I sat on my couch, jeans pulled over my legs but not buttoned, feet and everything else bare. My elbows rested on my knees, hands hanging down just like my head as the events of the night replayed in my mind.

  I smelled him. In my sleep the putrid scent of rogues had permeated my nostrils and I’d awakened. He’d come for me and for Zoe because somehow he’d known she was here. I wouldn’t let him have her, but me, hell yeah, he could go against me all he wanted.

  The second I stepped into the living room I’d known he was in cat form, I’d seen his green eyes. I hadn’t hesitated, hadn’t thought for one moment that Zoe wouldn’t listen to what I told her, so I shifted. And we fought, until the death. And when I went back to the bathroom, when the human form had once again pushed the cat away, Zoe was gone, and I felt like the air had been sucked right out of me. I’d only been able to do two other things since that moment—put on my jeans and call Aidan.

  I’d called the only people I knew in this world, the only ones that knew all the dark recesses of my life. I don’t know why I called them because I could have just left. I could have packed up my shit and hit the road, the way I’d been doing since I left the Sanchezes when I’d turned eighteen. They hadn’t fought me, had respected my decision and told me they loved me, just like real parents would do, I guess. Only they weren’t my real parents and they never would be.

  Footsteps sounded but I didn’t move, didn’t see the need to. I knew who was here.

  “Caleb?” Brayden called to me the second he stepped through the front door.

  I counted his steps, knew by now he was standing over the dead carcass of Dex’s cat. A hand touched my shoulder and I knew it was Aidan.

  “We’ll take care of the body. You get your stuff so we’ll be ready to leave,” the oldest of the Sanchez boys said.

  I didn’t move, didn’t even look up at him before the words fell from my lips, “She’s gone.”

  “Who’s gone?” Brayden asked.

  He stood in front of me now, I could tell by how close his voice sounded. Slowly, as if it weighed far too much to do so with any type of speed, I lifted my head. I looked at the two guys, the two shifters, that I’d run through the jungle with, first drank liquor with, talked about losing my virginity with and I repeated, “She’s gone.”

  “There was someone else here,” Aidan said. “And she’s gone.”

  I nodded.

  “Goddammit!” Brayden swore. “Did she see anything?”

  “Yes,” I replied because there was no way she couldn’t have, and there was no other reason she would have left. “I scared her away.”

  “You protected her,” Aidan said as if now he knew exactly what had happened, which was impossible because all I’d said on the phone was that I needed help.

  “We have to find her,” Brayden announced. “After we get rid of this body. I’m calling for backup.”

  Because Brayden always did what was right. He’d pulled out his cell phone and walked away from me and Aidan. It hadn’t mattered, I knew he was calling the Faction Leader to report what had happened. In minutes my apartment would be filled with shifter guards who would pack the cat carcass into a specially made body bag. From here it would go back to Havenway, the headquarters that the East Coast Faction Leader had constructed. They had crematories on premises for situations just like this, where shifter bodies were disposed of. They could not be buried for fear of someone, for whatever reason, exhuming the body and finding out it was not completely human.

  “Who is she?”

  Aidan’s question rang in my ears like an accusation and I was immediately on guard.

  “Can’t I have someone in my life? Can’t I do something that isn’t entwined with all this bullshit?”

  I’d stood to confront him but Aidan didn’t flinch. He was a couple inches taller than my six-foot-one stature. On his feet were black boots and he wore loose-fitting jeans with a black T-shirt beneath a dark denim jacket. His face was clean shaven, his hair shorter than mine. He did his fair share of working out and most likely training as evidenced by his broad shoulders and muscled upper body. In fact, he looked like he could probably kick my ass into next week—if I were drunk and blind in one eye.

  “Whoa, take it down a notch, bro. I’m not saying any of that,” Brayden insisted. “I was asking who she was to find out her connection to you. I think you’ve already given me that answer.”

  Running my hands down my face I exhaled deeply, trying to
get it together. Emotion was never good, I knew that and that’s why I’d always been so careful to keep a tight lid on whatever I was really feeling. Tonight, I’d let that barrier down, I’d opened the door just a crack and look what the hell had happened in response.

  “She’s important,” I admitted finally. That didn’t sound like enough of an explanation and it didn’t seem to accurately describe what Zoe was or what she’d come to be in my life, but it was the best I could do.

  Aidan nodded. “And she’s human.”

  I gave him a nod in return as I met his gaze. “Yes. She’s human.”

  “Then we’ve got to find her and make sure she doesn’t tell anyone what she saw,” Brayden said, coming back over to join us. “X is on his way with a crew. He’s not going to be happy to learn of exposure issues. It’d be better if we could tell him and the FL that we’ve taken care of it.”

  Aidan never even looked at Brayden, he kept staring at me. “I don’t think it’s going to be that simple,” he said.

  “It has to be,” Brayden insisted. “After your issues in Virginia and mine and Lidia’s in Pacifica, we’re batting two for three. We cannot afford to have the FL on our asses about another exposure issue. He’s going to kick all of us out of the training.”

  “I don’t give a shit about any training or the FL’s opinion of me!” I yelled. “That’s your shit to deal with, not mine.”

  Brayden stepped closer to me. “We’re family, bro. We’re a team. We always have been. The Assembly has been waiting for us to get through the training so we could use everything we’ve learned and seen over the years to join forces with them. Letting them down is not an option!”

  I moved in closer so that Brayden and I were now nose to nose. “Those are your fuckin’ options! I walk my own path, I do my own thing. Always have and always will.”

  “To hell with the people who care about you,” Brayden continued. “To hell with Mom and Dad.”

  I shook my head. “This doesn’t involve them! My choices are not their burdens.”

  “But your disappointing acts might just be the death of them, at least for Mom.”

  Brayden’s voice had grown a little quieter then and I was immediately concerned. I looked to Aidan who was now frowning at Brayden.

  “What’s he talking about?” I asked, not liking the scent I was picking up from these two.

  “Mom’s sick,” Aidan told me frankly. “Nick’s mate has gone down to Florida to take a look at her, but we’re not sure what it is.”

  So many thoughts rolled through my mind in the last ten seconds, my stomach twisted and I actually thought I might hurl.

  “What do you mean we’re not sure what it is? Has she been to a hospital?”

  “Ary is with her now,” Brayden said.

  “Who the hell is Ary and why is she not at a hospital?” I yelled.

  Aidan grabbed my arm this time, clenched his fingers with enough force that my mind focused on that instead of the rage that was about to break through.

  “Ary is Lead Enforcer Nick Delgado’s mate. She’s also a curandero and will find out what is going on with Mom,” he said slowly, solemnly.

  “She’s a tribe healer, not a doctor,” I told him, shaking my head.

  “Would you rather she go to a human hospital and find out that her problem is shifter related?” Brayden asked. “You always act first and think about the consequences, the questions, and repercussions later. It’s time to grow up, Caleb. To be who it is you were meant to be and to stop blaming everybody for the crappy way you choose to live your life.”

  I glared at him, ready to take a shot at his annoying ass, but Aidan held strong to my arm.

  “We’ll find your female, get this mess sorted out, and then you can go see Mom. She’ll like having you there since you were always her favorite,” Aidan added with a smirk.

  They’d always teased that I was Marta’s favorite because she let me have seconds and thirds way more frequently than she did them and when there was an argument between the three of us, Marta always came to bat for me. Hell! She couldn’t be sick, she couldn’t be gone … ever.

  My teeth and my fingers clenched and I shook my head to clear some of the dark fog that had been clouding my mind, egging the rage on like fuel to an already burgeoning fire.

  “What’s her name? Where does she live?” Brayden asked.

  “No,” I told them. “She wouldn’t go back to her place.”

  I was just about to try and think of another place she might go when we all heard a chiming sound.

  Aidan looked down at his waist where his cell phone was stored. “It’s not mine,” he said, looking over at Brayden.

  “That girly sounding alert is definitely not mine. Must be his,” Brayden said, nodding in my direction.

  I smirked and replied, “Wrong.”

  Moving through the living room to my bedroom I found Zoe’s purse laying on one of the chairs across from the bed. Beneath the purse was her cell phone and the screen was alight with a newly received text message.

  Caleb, if you are alive, please call me on Hanna’s phone. Please.

  The first thing I did was sigh with relief. Zoe was okay and she didn’t hate me. She actually wanted to talk to me. Waves of tension rolled off my shoulders as I gripped the phone tightly in my hand.

  Finally, because I heard new voices coming from the living room, I yelled out.

  “I found her!”

  CHAPTER 14

  Zoe

  “Are you out of every bit of your mind?” Hanna screeched, snatching her cell phone from my hand. “Did you just call the bastard stalker that seduced you into his bed and then left you while somebody tried to break in to his apartment?”

  To say Hanna was a bit upset at the events of the night was an understatement. Not that I wasn’t still shaking, even after the shower and the Band-Aids on my knees and scrapes on my hands. Because I was, but I hadn’t exactly told her everything. Which, from the way she was ranting and raving might have turned out to be a good thing.

  I was sitting on her couch, fluffy shag pillows propped up behind me with a cup of smoking hot tea on the coffee table in front of me. Hanna actually thought a shot of scotch was the cure to everything, but since I wasn’t a drinker, she’d restrained herself enough to make me tea instead. Now, she was pacing back and forth across her zebra-print rug, which made her look all kinds of crazy since the leggings and tank top she slept in were of a leopard print. I was feeling a little too close to the jungle right now, especially considering what I’d just seen in Caleb’s apartment.

  “I just want to know that he’s alright,” I replied finally.

  “Oh he’s alright, he got the hell out of there before anything bad happened, which I cannot say for you.” The last was said as she pointed the phone to my now-exposed knees since she’d given me a pair of shorts and a T-shirt of her own to wear. Her eyes also went to the bandage I reapplied to my ankle on my own this time. I hadn’t told her how that really happened either.

  It’s funny how Hanna was the first person I’d thought of to run to in this situation, but she was the last person I trusted with the truth. She had this thing about overreacting, which I’d seen early on in our relationship. That might also explain why I never told her about my past either. But I had told Caleb. On the first night I’d actually spent any serious time with him, I’d confessed about my family and I’d had sex with him. What did that mean?

  “Could you sit down, please? You’re making me dizzy,” I said instead of going back and forth with her about the situation.

  “Oh, I’ll sit down alright,” she huffed, coming around the coffee table and dropping herself onto the couch right beside me. “I’ll sit right here and wait for you to tell me why you went to his place anyway. Every time he’s been in the bar he’s sat in the back looking all creepy, just staring at people and eating his food.”

  “That’s not a crime,” I pointed out as I reached for the cup of tea.

 
“No, it’s not, but hanging around in dark parking lots at three in the morning sure is. Showing up when somebody’s trying to buy their groceries and trying to get a free feel is.”

  “Actually, it’s not unless I perceive those actions as dangerous.”

  That probably wasn’t the right thing to say because Hanna’s eyes almost bulged right out of her face. Her lips, which were usually painted and highly glossed with some of her fabulous MAC gloss, were bare and pressed together into a tight line. That confirmed she wasn’t happy with what I’d just said.

  “Look, Hanna, I see your point and I get that from the other side of the fence this all looks pretty bad. But there was something, I don’t know, like a force in the air that just kept pulling us together. No matter how many times I pushed him away, he just kept coming back.”

  “That,” she said, poking a finger into my arm, “is not the force, honey. That’s crazy stalker crap and I knew I should have called the police the first time.”

  She turned in the chair then so that her whole body was facing me and took the cup of tea out of my hands. Her fingers laced with mine and she looked at me with what I presumed was her very serious face.

  “You can tell me, Zoe, I won’t judge. Did he rape you? Is that what all this ‘someone broke in and he left’ drama is all about? Did that asshole make you do things you didn’t want to?”

  I’d begun shaking my head at the moment she said she wouldn’t judge because that’s all Hanna Etheridge ever did. The words that followed were just as bad and just as out of line. I slipped my hands from hers, wondering if this wasn’t the wrong place to come after all.